WILLIAM FAULKNER, Beyond - literature save 2

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"Labor-saving!" Mothershed cried. "By God, I..." He cursed with impotent fury.The Judge might have been smiling <strong>save</strong> for his eyes. He sealed the cigarette again."Have you a match?""What?" Mothershed said. He glared at the Judge, his mouth open. He soughtthrough his clothes. From out the savage movement, strapped beneath his armpit, therepeeped fleetly the butt of a heavy pistol. "No," he said. "I ain't.""Yes," the Judge said. He twisted the cigarette, his gaze light, quizzical. "But youstill haven't told me what you are doing here. I heard that you had..."Again Mothershed cursed, prompt, outraged. "I ain't. I just committed suicide."He glared at the Judge. "God damn it, I remember raising the pistol; I remember the littlecold ring it made against my ear; I remember when I told my finger on the trigger..." Heglared at the Judge. "I thought that that would be one way I could escape the preachers,since by the church's own token..." He glared at the Judge, his pale gaze apoplectic andoutraged. "Well, I know why you are here. You come here looking for that boy."The Judge looked down, his lip lifted, the movement pouched upward about hiseyes. He said quietly, "No."Mothershed watched him, glared at him. "Looking for that boy. Agnosticism." Hesnarled it. "Won't say 'Yes' and won't say 'No' until you see which way the cat will jump.Ready to sell out to the highest bidder. By God, I'd rather have give up and died insanctity, with every heaven-yelping fool in ten miles around...""No," the Judge said quietly behind the still, dead gleam of his teeth. Then histeeth vanished quietly, though he did not look up. He sealed the cigarette carefully again."There seem to be a lot of people here." Mothershed now began to watch him withspeculation, tasting his savage gums, his pale furious glare arrested. "You have seen otherfamiliar faces besides my own here, I suppose. Even those of men whom you know onlyby name, perhaps?""Oh," Mothershed said. "I see. I get you now." The Judge seemed to be engrossedin the cigarette. "You want to take a whirl at them too, do you? Go ahead. I hope you willget a little more out of them that will stick to your guts than I did. Maybe you will, sinceyou don't seem to want to know as much as you want something new to be uncertainabout. Well, you can get plenty of that from any of them.""You mean you have..."Again Mothershed cursed, harsh, savage. "Sure. Ingersoll Paine. Every bastardone of them that I used to waste my time reading when I had better been sitting on thesunnyside of a log.""Ah," the Judge said. "Ingersoll. Is he...""Sure. On a bench just inside the park yonder. And maybe on the same benchyou'll find the one that wrote the little women books. If he ain't there, he ought to be."So the Judge sat forward, elbows on knees, the unlighted cigarette in his fingers."So you too are reconciled," he said. The man who Mothershed said was Ingersoll lookedat his profile quietly. "To this place.""Ah," the other said. He made a brief, short gesture."Reconciled."The Judge did not look up. "You accept it? You acquiesce?" He seemed to beabsorbed in the cigarette. "If I could just see Him, talk to Him." The cigarette turnedslowly in his fingers. "Perhaps I was seeking Him. Perhaps I was seeking Him all the
time I was reading your books, and Voltaire and Montesquieu. Perhaps I was." Thecigarette turned slowly. "I have believed in you. In your sincerity. I said, if Truth is to befound by man, this man will be among those who find it. At one time I was in the throesof that suffering from a still green hurt which causes even an intelligent man to cast aboutfor anything, any straw. I had a foolish conceit: you will be the first to laugh at it as Imyself did later. I thought, perhaps there is a hereafter, a way station into nothingnessperhaps, where for an instant lesser men might speak face to face with men like youwhom they could believe; could hear from such a man's own lips the words: 'There ishope,' or: 'There is nothing.' I said to myself, in such case it will not be Him whom I shallseek; it will be Ingersoll or Paine or Voltaire." He watched the cigarette."Give me your word now. Say either of these to me. I will believe."The other looked at the Judge for a time. Then he said, "Why? Believe why?"The paper about the cigarette had come loose. The Judge twisted it carefully back,handling the cigarette carefully."You see, I had a son. He was the last of my name and race. After my wife diedwe lived alone, two men in the house. It had been a good name, you see. I wanted him tobe manly, worthy of it. He had a pony which he rode all the time. I have a photograph ofthem which I use as a bookmark. Often, looking at the picture or watching themunbeknownst as they passed the library window, I would think What hopes ride yonder;of the pony I would think What burden do you blindly bear, dumb brute. One day theytelephoned me at my office. He had been found dragging from the stirrup. Whether thepony had kicked him or he had struck his head in falling, I never knew."He laid the cigarette carefully on the bench beside him and opened the briefcase.He took out a book. "Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary" he said. "I always carry a bookwith me. I am a great reader. It happens that my life is a solitary one, owing to the factthat I am the last of my family, and perhaps to the fact that I am a Republicanofficeholder in a Democratic stronghold. I am a Federal judge, from a Mississippi district.My wife's father was a Republican." He added quickly, "I believe the tenets of theRepublican Party to be best for the country. You will not believe it, but for the last fifteenyears my one intellectual companion has been a rabid atheist, almost an illiterate, who notonly scorns all logic and science, but who has a distinct body odor as well. Sometimes Ihave thought, sitting with him in my office on a summer afternoon, a damp one, that if arestoration of faith could remove his prejudice against bathing, I should be justified ingoing to that length myself even." He took a photograph from the book and extended it."This was my son."The other looked at the picture without moving, without offering to take it. Fromthe brown and fading cardboard a boy of ten, erect upon the pony, looked back at themwith a grave and tranquil hauteur. "He rode practically all the time. Even to church (Iattended church regularly then. I still do, at times, even now). We had to take an extragroom along in the carriage to..." He looked at the picture, musing. "After his motherdied I never married again. My own mother was sickly, an invalid. I could cajole her. Inthe absence of my aunts I could browbeat her into letting me go barefoot in the garden,with two house servants on watch to signal the approach of my aunts. I would return tothe house, my manhood triumphant, vindicated, until I entered the room where she waitedfor me. Then I would know that for every grain of dust which pleasured my feet, shewould pay with a second of her life. And we would sit in the dusk like two children, she
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